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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

When consumer rights to privacy are picked up by HHS

BTC - According to reports from some healthcare privacy advocates, the pendulum may be swinging closer towards reasonable regards to privacy when it comes to selling healthcare reform to local constituencies. The work of advocates is tough. It's very important to applaud their efforts to hang in there when they are fighting for our rights to a decent way of life. When they make steps forward it is sometimes hard for the public to interpret how much of a win is actually, a win. More often they need our help to affirm government leadership when they are moving in the right direction.

"It is my pleasure to announce... the Notice of Proposed Rule Making [NPRM] that will modify high tech, the HIPPA Privacy and Enforcement rules under the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Healthcare Act.... As we enter into a new age of electronic health information exchanges that it is more important than ever to ensure greater consumer confidence in the privacy and security of their health information and the industry's use of new technology.

The NPRM being published strengthens the privacy and secuity protections of health information established under HIPPA as an integral part of the administration's efforts to broaden the use of health information technology." -

"It's important to understand that this announcement we are making today is part of an Administration-wide commitment to make sure no one has access to your personal information unless you want them to," says HHS Secry. Sibelius

Steps like this do more to restore confidences lost.

However, it's not enough to get what they want from the public: complicity with a system which gives the government more responsibility over surveilling sensitive information about their lives.

As I recall, at every opportunity given, government representatives have been dispatched to sell the American public on healthcare. Now we get healthcare whether we want it or not, whether we are insured or not and the government can manage health records whether we want it or not. The gap between what is said and what is done hasn't helped to dial back the vigilance of critics. The public is now wiser to the political process after common privacy and freedoms have become subjective interpretive art for bureaucrats instead of rights and the rule of law.

The people extended a credit of trust over privacy which was unapologetically railroaded with FISA and the Patriot Act. As a result we have mass galvanization of people who are seemingly ignored by our government. I have interpreted the Tea Party as a label slapped on quickly by conventional media who are quick to misinterpret. I think it deserves a new name to aptly reflect more of the truth: the Exploited Underemployed of America. They are unified by things they can't pay for.

Our government's dalliances with totalitarian procedural fascism have trained the masses to not trust them. With HIPPA, privacy advocates and civil libertarians will be waiting when the pendulum swings back the other way.